Random thoughts. Not fit for general consumption. Parental advisory. Occasional sarcasm and irony ahead. No warranties, explicit or implied. No money-back-guarantee. Does not prevent hairloss, bad foot hygiene or acid reflux.

2010-05-19

Bodily harm

I am constantly amazed at what people think of as beautiful. Lately I have been trying to adjust the colors of my TV set. There seems to be an abundance of orange people on TV. No, I am not talking about people with a tan and I have not suddenly become a racist. I am talking about orange people. A color that in nature only occurs in certain fruits and vegetables, save for the odd poisonous frog or squeaky feathery things used to accessorize unpleasant tracts of moist forestry.

After realizing my TV is just dandy vis-a-vis color balance I have started to notice them in real life as well. Holy cow, they are everywhere. Just the other day I saw a completely orange girl with what might have been naturally colored lips -- though her oddball skin tone made them look like the lips of a victim of prolonged water inhalation. If it hadn't been for her distractingly gaudy discoloration she would probably have been a rather pretty girl. Perhaps even sexy. However I was not able to mobilize a single impure thought; and I suddenly got a strange craving for carrots and dip.

I am not sure whether we are talking paintjob or a diet seriously skewed towards orange foods in pill form. In any case I assume that it is something they subject to voluntarily.

The specimen I observed this morning was probably the result of a more expensive and drastic exercise in self-disfigurement. I was observing this couple during some sort of ritual in which they took turns trying to digest the other person's face. At first glance they appeared to be about the same age -- a mid-forties couple. As they drew nearer my estimate of their respective ages shifted -- and not necessarily in favor of the lady.

She had that puffy, swollen just-got-out-of-bed-look about her face, and combined with battered, dry, peroxide hair my internal prejudice-engine mapped her to one of two uncharitable stereotypes. As she spoke to her companion it turned out to be stereotype number two -- that is: not be the stereotype of wayward scandinavian birdbrain on leave from a life of gathering shiny objects on, or about, Rodeo Drive. -"Da, iz good. I think we make flight".

However, upon further study there was conflicting data. Indeed, the face, into which untold quantities of unhealthy substances must have been injected (no doubt with a syringe that would make an elephant whinge), hinted at a mature woman. But the skin covering the sternocleidomastoideus looked uncharacteristically elastic. Furthermore, as my gaze made its mandatory trip down her neckline I observed a notable absence of leather. When I say that she had a rack like a teenager I am not talking about topology, but texture. (Topology alone produces inconclusive evidence since it can be engineered -- and pleasingly so if done in moderation. Surface texture, not so much).

In other words, she was probably a good 15 years younger than she looked. Which begs the question: why would anyone voluntarily subject to treatments that make them look a good decade and a half older!? I bet she would have looked stunning if she hadn't had those awful things done to her face.